Rise in Flagstaff violent crime tied to street alcoholics - Arizona Daily Sun

Violent crimes are up in Flagstaff this year, and police are pointing the finger at street alcoholics.

In just the past four months, police are reporting a 23 percent increase in violent crime, with aggravated assault, sexual assault and robbery seeing the biggest spikes.

Street alcoholics, also called by police “public intoxicants” and “serial inebriates,” represent less than 1 percent of Flagstaff’s total population but are responsible for 33 percent of aggravated assaults, 34 percent of sexual assaults and 58 percent of robberies that occurred from January to August, according to crime data from the Flagstaff Police Department.

A serial inebriate is a person who has had 10 or more contacts with the police for public intoxication during the year.

Flagstaff Police Department Spokesman Sgt. Cory Runge said that an increase in violent crime near the end of summer was abnormal.

“These violent crimes represent a new trend in criminal activity in our community,” Runge said. “Typically we see increases every summer then decreases in the fall.”

Runge went on to state that the main victims and perpetrators of violent crimes were “homeless individuals with substance abuse issues.”

“Serial inebriates make up a small segment of our population but are involved in a significant number of violent crimes,” Runge said.

Police have responded to 146 reports of aggravated assault from January to October, an 18 percent increase from the same timeframe last year.

Police noted 118 reports of aggravated assault against law enforcement, firefighters and healthcare workers in 2017, a 51 percent increase from last year when police reported 78 aggravated assaults.

“A huge number of aggravated assaults are directed at the status of an individual,” Runge said. “Firefighters and healthcare workers in the emergency room are the biggest victims.”

An aggravated assault charge for hitting a public safety official requires a lower standard of physical contact than assaulting a regular citizen. Hitting or spitting on law enforcement is automatically aggravated assault while doing the same to a citizen may just constitute an assault charge.

Flagstaff Fire Department Deputy Chief Mark Wilson said the police department’s numbers are underreported since firefighters will most often choose not to press charges when they are assaulted.

“From a fire department perspective, those numbers are low if you compare the number of assaults we deal with vs. the number of reported assaults,” Wilson said. “Many times our firefighters choose not to press charges because we have limited resources and would rather not spend too much time dealing with an aggravated assault issue.”

Wilson said the majority of assault charges his department deals with involve serial inebriants.

“Most of the time we are dealing with an intoxicated person that we are physically taking to the hospital against their will because of their medical condition. A situation like that can make people combative,” Wilson said. “This is a very unhealthy population that makes up about 30 percent of our calls to service every year.”

Representatives from Northern Arizona Healthcare did not respond to multiple attempts for comment regarding aggravated assaults on healthcare workers.

Armed robberies in Flagstaff are up 125 percent from last year with 45 robberies reported this year. The majority of the robberies were committed against people, with five robberies committed against businesses.

Public intoxicants were involved in 58 percent of robberies this year as both victims and suspects. Alcohol or drugs were involved in 68 percent of all robberies.

Neighborhoods

Sunnyside has seen the most instances of violent crime, accounting for 17 percent of all violent crimes in Flagstaff.

However, Sunnyside has mostly seen a decrease in crime over the last 10 years, according to police data.

The Southside neighborhood accounts for 6.5 percent of violent crimes, a decrease from 2012, when the neighborhood accounted for 11.8 percent of all violent crime.

Gang Activity

Police also noted several violent incidents that they believe could be linked to gang activity.

Runge said that five shootings and two stabbings over the last three months were gang-related. Police were able to identify gang-related incidents based upon physical descriptions and incidents where gang members mentioned their gang affiliation to the victims.

Arrests have been made in four of these seven incidents.

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